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Looper's Delight
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You got most of mine. I know of a few more: 9) Paint over the seam: This is so simple and probably so common it's almost not worth mentioning: on the second pass of the loop, record an event that occurs over the start/end point. This works best for non-rhythmic loops. It won't change the perception of repetition, but it will help obscure the start point. 10) Loop in an unexpected multiple: This works best with rhythmic playing. In most Western music, people expect patterns to occur in multiples of 2. (Events occur in songs 1, 2, 4 or 8 times in a row, but rarely, say, 5 times.) So, instead of recording 2 or 4 measures of your rhythm in a loop, try recording 3, or 5, or 12 measures. (I do this in the track "Mold" on the cd "Living Things" - the loop represents 3 repeats of the perceived pattern, where the ear expects it to be 1, 2 or 4.) 11) Keep loops minimal & complete them with live elements: The more predictable events there are on a loop, the quicker it wears out its welcome, I think. For example, if someone has a drum loop where there's 16 layers of kicks, snares, claps, toms, hi-hats, crash cymbals, cowbell, shakers, etc, it's only going to take a couple repeats for it to sound canned. On the other hand, if your loop includes only the basic kicks and hi-hats, and you play the snares and occasional accent kicks free-hand, you can get it to sound much more lively. -- Matt Davignon mattdavignon@gmail.com www.ribosomemusic.com Podcast! http://ribosomematt.podomatic.com Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com> went: > in another thread, Matt Davignon pre-went: >> >> Some musicians (such as myself) attempt >> to hide the seam, in hopes that if people lose track of the loop's >> start/end point, they will stop perceiving the loop as an unaltered >> (canned?) element. >> >> > This is a favorite subject of mine. I'm very rhythmically oriented in my > music and I've never used > feedback for some strange reason in my looping. Consequently, it's > important to figure out > ways to make one's loops not sound so static. > > Here are some of my strategies for > hiding the recurring nature of a loop from the listeners' ears. > > 1) I got this first one from Steve Lawson: but a random filter on your > loop that > has very strong sweeps between frequencies and high 'Q' values > > 2) Use two different and non-syncrhonized loopers and make on long > ambient > loop over which you put a rhythmic secondary looping track. The loop > will > randomly > cycle against each other. Even when they happen to coincide on each > other's downbeats, > it will have taken so long that the audience will not percieve it as a > coherence. > > 3) With rhythmic loops you can use 'slip' functions (Electrix Repeater) > or > mute/retrigger features > (like in the EDP) that retrigger wherever you were in the loop when you > last > mute the loop so that > the rhythm plays differently, rhythmically speaking against another > element > (this also requires two > loopers playing simultaneously. > > 4) Use any kind of modulation or delay functions that are in a different > time scale to your loop > (this is particularly effective with ambient loops that cycle over > rhythmic > loops but can also be used > with two different ambient or textural loops in less rhythimcally bases > music. > > 5) In software manipulation of loops, use randomization features for > processing or retriggering > one's looped content. > > 6) Using the 'scramble' functions and/or the quantized replace > (Looperlative > DL-1 terms) or INS=SUB > features in quantized mode to Replace rhythm fractions of your loop. > My brother is especially effective with this technique when using > different > feedback percentages as he replaces. > > With auto swell, volume pedal or guitar part swell or 'slow gear' guitar > techniques, this also is a beautiful > way of continually morphing your loops. > > 7) This next one I have almost no experience with, but Matthias Grob > truly > loves it and does it > beautifully...............using different feedback percentages to subtly > replace original content. > I think this category could be greatly expanded by the loopers here. > > 8) This one only exists in the LP-2 because I put it in the software for > this purpose: > Random Retrigger...............allows you to randomly retrigger one's > loop > (the loop continues from > the random start point whenever this is used. Due to the nature of the > wave forms being of unequal > volume when randomly retriggered this always causes a rhythmic 'gated' > effect. > This is particularly effective at creating ambient or avant garde > a-rhythmic > loops and then creating > and ostinato rhythm by rhythmically playing the foot pedal like a kick > drum. > > In a best case scenario: use a secondary looper to re-loop your > results. > > So, this begs the question: What other strategies work well for this > musical purpose? > > Rick Walker > >